A Break From Reality
by Agentyoda
Summary: An extremely dry and sarcastic tale of the residents of Storybrook as they encounter a series of unexpected murders. Recommended for older ages simply due to the more complex nature of the humor involved - little to no adult material besides some violence and death.


The town of Storybrook was ablaze with gossip: Emma Swan had arrived.

What a curious woman she was! Driving an odd little convertible, brightly colored amongst the dry and dreary landscape (which no one ever questioned - it fit their lives so perfectly); becoming the assistant to the sheriff; publicly vandalizing the mayor's house; and, most strange of all - not leaving. Storybrook just doesn't get any visitors. Not until now.

But life continued in Storybrook.

For most of them.

One day, somewhat soon after Emma's arrival, the recently awakened David decided to go out for a walk around the city - to contemplate the ever-present problem that his conflicted heart always whined of: Mary Margaret or his wife-in-another-life Kathryn? (Oh, the irony!) Strolling through the city proper, he smelled something quite odd when he passed by an alley: a stench that he feels is familiar, but he cannot place it. Whatever it was, atrocious and horrendous did not begin to describe it. He turned down the alley in curiosity and followed the scent (though he had to pinch his nose as he proceeded - so abhorrent and heavy was the smell). He turned around a corner and gasped (which he immediately regretted, due to the fumes): on the ground before him, in a random back alley of the humble town of Storybrook, lay the body of Mr. Gold, with blood splattered against the entire back wall and two spattered holes in the center of his chest.

Needless to say, this caused quite the uproar; partly because there was a murder and mostly because they don't have to pay him rent anymore. His body was so old and rotten that they did not even bother moving him to the ER; he went straight to the morgue (where he seemed quite at home) until they cremated him and scattered his ashes in front of the IRS building. "He would like that," they all said; what they really meant, of course, was that he wouldn't like that; and they liked it precisely for that reason. He was not a very popular character.

But even hatred for a thing does not stop the press machine from speaking at great length about it.

Soon, Granny's little shop was packed with people. The sheriff and his new apprentice tried an investigation; since everyone had a motive, they didn't get very far. However, Emma - actually using this lost resource called common sense - asked about gun records. Could they not go see who has a gun registered? For the cause of death was quite clearly by gunshot - an old shotgun model. This was acclaimed as a wise idea by all inside the cafe; so, as is natural with small towns, everyone promptly left and went to the town hall to access the records. Everyone except Granny and Red, of course, since they had to tend the shop.

As the mob approached the town hall, Emma decided to actually follow the legal procedure she swore to uphold and taped off the area as a scene for investigation. Fortunately, the tape was used so little in the past decades of detective work that the mob spent the afternoon marveling at the tape - "It's like were in CSI! We're just missing the competent investigators!" - while Emma and the sheriff investigated the files. The mayor, slightly unnerved by a brutal murder "in her own backyard," as she said, handed over the files without the usual bickering. To their surprise, the only person to own that model of shotgun was one of the electrical workers. He had the reputation of being a really grumpy guy. When they inquired as to where he was, his fellow workers (curiously, only two of them could be found) said that the other five had gone over to the mayor's house earlier that afternoon about a call they got from her - something about the circuit breakers.

However, this greatly surprised the mayor, who had made no such call; she was at Granny's with the rest of the group. Unfortunately for her, the comment she made earlier was none too prudent: she had complained, in astonishment, that a murder happened in her own backyard; when they arrived at the mayor's house, they found neither one nor two - nor even three or four - but five bodies lying dead in her backyard. From careful examination, it appears that someone rigged a small explosive to the inside of the small electrical box on the side of her house, which caused the highly incriminating scene before them. We say "highly incriminating" not because they actually got any closer to finding the killer but because the mayor went on a total rampage of insults and curses that solidified everyone's solemn belief that no on will ever like her.

It should be no surprise to the reader that the mayor was not the murderer. This became apparent since the mayor died of asbestos poisoning the next day. It appears that asbestos had been slowly leaked into her air conditioning unit until the air was literally turning green in her room due to the immensely high concentration; the mayor thought it was a mold problem. Ironically, there was a mold problem until the asbestos killed it all.

In any case, Granny's little cafe was packed. Granny seemed particularly happy about the massive traffic coming through her shop; Ruby was not, since this significantly increased her workload. In any case, the police investigation continued. The town's mood changed from excited after the first murder to horrified after the explosion to horribly scared after this seventh murder. For all the good it did, the sheriff called martial law in effect and attempted to call the FBI or National Guard. But since we're talking about Storybrook, no one answered the phone; or, if they did, they referred them to the IRS for a "surprise audit," at which the sheriff hung up the phone. He still received a letter of audit in the mail - the only mail that seemed to be able to make it through whatever magic barrier that cut them off from the world.

Emma, now that the mayor was dead, decided to take custody of her son; she announced this intention in the midst of the mob during dinner. Some applauded her action; but most just stared at her, asking a silent question until Sidney voiced it: "Seven people are dead. Could you stop thinking about yourself and actually do your job?" (It helped immensely that he said all of this in a very excellent Sean Connery impersonation.) The crowd applauded him and Emma, who was unable to come up with a good response, was fired; Sidney became the new assistant sheriff, only to promptly die the next day by an explosive and extremely sudden onset of Trypanosomiasis. It appeared to be a totally natural death, unfortunately at the most inconvenient time. Emma was dutifully restored to her post.

Anyhow, the investigation continued! They finally tracked down the murder weapon for the first murder; after searching random homes, they found it under Mother Superior's bed, along with a stash of photographs of David and no less than twenty-four bottles of vodka. It was generally thought that the photographs were Mary Margaret's until they searched David's house and found that he kept a closet full of pictures of himself. Nobody asked about the vodka. When Emma had the brilliant idea of sweeping the shotgun for prints, they could only find the sheriffs; he, as usual, completely disregarded all crime scene procedure and managed to cover the only evidence they had with his own fingerprints. Since Mother Superior had an alibi and professed no knowledge of how the gun got there, the investigation was stumped once more. She was, however, exposed for the fraud she was: a cursory examination showed that her nuns had violated almost every vow they took within the Catholic Church - chiefly that of actually being Catholic. They were promptly excommunicated; which they accepted by going to Granny's and joining the general complaints of a murderer being on the loose.

Finally, however, the discovery was made in a really remarkable set of coincidences: you see, Mr. Gold had a very large estate - nearly the entire town of Storybrook! As such, this would be a massively taxable property for the IRS; so when the sheriff called the government for assistance, the IRS looked up their records and found that Mr. Gold (and the entire town!) had been evading taxes for over twenty years! This, unlike the serial killings, was enough to warrant military action. The U.S. Army promptly dispatched a series of National Guard Humvees, while the Air Force sent a Reaper drone system high above the simple city of Storybrook. Apparently, the murder of the mayor was enough to break whatever curse separated their poor city from the rest of the world, since the UAV was able to circle the city and record their going-ons. They noticed that, after night fell, a certain person kept sneaking around the city, breaking into various houses and planting fake evidence.

The murderer was Granny. After years of being mistreated by everyone around her, she finally snapped. Starting with those most arrogant, she began her slow process of elimination: Mr. Gold; then Grumpy; then the mayor; and by that time, she had such a great business going on gossip that she decided to feed the fires by planting false evidence and leads to keep everyone interested and depressed enough to buy drinks.

This story ends with the arrest of Granny for murder - along with the arrest of every working adult for tax evasion. The moral of the story is to be nice and pay your taxes.


End file.
